TS Inter 1st, 2nd year result 2019: A number of evaluators of Telangana Intermediate Board Examination’s answer-sheets were under duress to complete the job quickly so that results could be declared early on April 18, which may led to discrepancies in the results, a committee formed by the state government to look into the issue is learnt to have stated.
Many evaluators who checked the mark-sheets were also called for election duty during the Telangana Assembly polls, held in December 2018, and did the job hastily, the three-member committee is learnt to have stated in its report, submitted on Saturday.
This resulted in evaluators making mistakes such as marking 08 instead of 88, or even 00 instead of 99, it is learnt. This, officials said, happened in the case of a student from Mancherial, named G Navya, who got 0 in Telugu subject. But a re-verification the same day revised her marks to 99.
The report blames the firm Globerena Technologies for “minor technical mistakes’’ but, it is learnt, does not fix the blame on anyone for the glitches, which resulted in over 3 lakh students, out of 9 lakh who appeared for the exams, marked as failed. The results, declared on April 18, led to suicides by 19 students, who were shown as failed.
The probe panel comprises G T Venkateshwara Rao, MD of Telangana State Technological Service; Dr A Vassan of BITS, Hyderabad; and Dr Nishanth Dongri of IIT, Hyderabad. The panel in its report made 15 recommendations. One of the key ones is that if students who scored 80 per cent or more in Intermediate first year failed in the second-year finals, then their mark-sheets should be immediately checked before results are declared. The committee also noted that despite not signing an official agreement with Globarena Technologies for the work of Intermediate examination data and result processing, the state Education Department gave the job to the firm.
Education Secretary B Janardhan Reddy said, “It is a technical detail which we are investigating. All officials found guilty of doing this will be punished. We have not paid any money to Globarena for this job. If they are found to have botched up, we will not pay the fees due (more than Rs 4 crore).”
Sources said many evaluators who checked the mark-sheets were also called for Assembly election duty in December, and even though they were in “no mood” to do the job, they were forced to do it. A member of the Telangana State Lecturers’ Association said that under pressure from the government, many lecturers were given 100 to 150 mark-sheets each day to check, while the maximum number of answer-sheets they can check is 40 to 50.
The member said, “Both the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections (April 18) were over in Telangana. What was the hurry to declare results on April 18? We sought five or six days more, but the Education Department refused. It forced evaluators to do complete the job in a hurry. Mistakes may have occurred due to pressure.”
The punishment for mistakes is usually Rs 5,000, but Education Secretary Janardhan Reddy said that they will take strict action against officials found to have erred. An official said, “We are investigating whether some teachers and lecturers who evaluated the mark-sheets deliberately miscalculated the final score so that they are barred from evaluation and election duties (in future).” The committee’s report also blamed the lack of coordination between Globarena and State Board of Intermediate Education for the fiasco, it is learnt.
According to Janardhan Reddy, re-verification of answer scripts of all failed students will be completed in 12 days. The report pointed out errors in provisional mark-sheets, wrong IDs and photos of students, and incorrect examination hall ticket numbers.